SB 152 (Beall), which would have radically restructured the Active Transportation Program and to which we announced our opposition last month, failed to pass the Senate Appropriations Committee last week. While we are pleased that the current structure of the ATP, including the disadvantaged communities priorities and the ratios between statewide, small urban/rural and MPO components will remain unchanged, we wish to thank Senator Beall and the bill’s sponsors for seeking to address our concerns over the past month. We certainly believe that there is room for improvement in the ATP, particularly in making the evaluation scoring process more transparent. However, we believe that that the ATP guideline development process, which will begin for Cycle 5 this fall, is a much better venue in which to sort those problems out than through legislation. Guidelines development includes many public meetings and opportunities for input and discussion that lead to a much more transparent process to find solutions that work for as many stakeholders as possible.
